Colorado, Texas Southern Quotes
December 23, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
General- "I just told Mark Johnson on the radio, I have been coaching now for 23 years, 17 at the Division 1 level, I am not sure I have ever coached a team even close to this one in terms of inconsistency. If I could ask Santa Claus for one thing it would be for a consistent basketball team. I don't care if we are consistently good or consistently bad I just want to be consistent so we know what we have to work on. We can get better, but right now it is a hard thing to manage and I have to do a better job of it, obviously I am not, but that is going to be on my mind for the next three days. Hopefully I can enjoy Christmas with my family, which I will, but we have to get better."
On how well CU was prepared for TSU - "Our assistant coaches do a great job with the scouting reports on both the personnel and what the teams are running. We have not been fooled one time all year. It just boggles my mind how we can let a team shoot 22 percent in the first half, and they shoot 50 (percent) in the second half. Sometimes basketball works like that but we shoot 50 percent in the first half and 28 percent in the second half. At least we turned it over (eight times) in the first half and 12 times in the second half so we are relatively consistent there."
On if his team took their foot of the gas in the second half - "I don't know why they would. The first thing we talked about at halftime is don't play the scoreboard, play the possession. Maybe they just don't like to listen to their coach, I don't know. But I know what we talked about it. If that is what they did, then shame on them."
On if his team missed Askia Booker's Energy - "Yeah, we needed Askia and Damiene (Cain) tonight. I felt like down the stretch there I felt comfortable with four guys on the floor. If I had any guts I would have played five-on-four and let these other guys sit and watch because they are not getting it done. We are capable of it, but we didn't play like it."
On Damiene Cain's potential when he gets healthy - "As soon as he gets healthy and gets up to speed mentally he is a definite cog."
On individual player consistency - "Andre Roberson since the Colorado State game has been our most consistent player. He has given us good minutes, consistent minutes pretty much every night out since the Colorado State game. Up to the Colorado State game he was just as inconsistent as everybody else; but since then he has done a good job. Carlon [Brown] is getting better at it. Spencer [Dinwiddie] is getting better at it."
On what he talked about at halftime - "In the first half there were so many good things that happened. It was one of those halftimes when it was like, 'Okay, what do we need to talk about? We are shooting 50 percent and we are holding them to 22 percent.' Things were going pretty good, so we talk about not playing the scoreboard. Play every possession like it is the last one and let's maintain that focus, maintain that intensity; that is what we talked about at halftime. But what we talk about sometimes and what our team does are two different things. The only thing that I have as a coach that these players want at the end of the day, they can want to be patted on the back, they want compliments and they want their scholarships, and that is true, but during the season the one thing that I have that they want is playing time. Right now, it is hard to know who to play. From night to night, from half to half it is hard. Everybody asks me about my rotations and my lineup. Well shoot, we don't have a rotation until we find consistency. You get rotations because of consistent play and you know what you are going to get when you put a kid into the game in terms of taking care of the ball and taking good shots, boxing out and playing defense and the things we can control. There may be nights when we miss shots, we understand that."
Texas Southern Head Coach Tony B. Harvey
General - "Our team is very youthful. We've got all these new guys who are trying to get acclimated to the style. It doesn't help much that we play on the road all the time. We are constantly getting beat up. When you look at our losses, they are to premier teams in the country. I think our attention to detail is getting much better as a group. We just have to be smarter and learn to execute and take care of the ball. (Colorado) played well tonight, they shot the ball well and they are going to have a nice team. But, ultimately for us, we kind of let it get away from us. We didn't play as smart down the stretch like we needed to."
On The First Half - "I didn't think we executed the way we needed to. We didn't take care of the ball. I didn't like our energy level at all. We knew what their game plan was and we talked about that. We gave guys wide open looks. Last year we had a really long team. In this year's group we've got some midgets out there so we've got to play big. And our midgets are playing small and our hands are down and we've got to speed guys up. I thought in the second half we did a much better job of speeding them up and not giving them those wide open looks and keeping them on their heels at all times."
On G Omar Strong - "The one victory we did have when we played at home, we shot the ball pretty well. Omar has shot the ball. Lawrence [Johnson-Danner] has struggled this year. Just understanding that he's on the radar. He had surgery in the offseason on his feet so his quickness isn't the same, so he's got to understand how hard he has got to work. We are playing with a point guard by committee right now. I've really got two guards that are trying to play, so the looks aren't the same so it changes the game. We've got to be more creative on movement, harder cuts, playing off the ball, we can't get stagnant and we've just got to be ball strong. We've just got to get better as a team. (Omar Strong) was a really good college player. He tore his ACL so he is coming off a torn ACL. He is a tough kid. But my thing with Omar has been trying to teaching him how to play the right way. This is not summer league, this is playing off penetration, learning to turn down looks, be creative, share the basketball, get other guys looks, come off screens, defend, talk. We've still got a long ways to go. But if a guy is making shots, he is a little bit easier to coach."
On The Difference In Second Half - "(We were able to) speed them up and make them uncomfortable. We made them turn the ball over a little bit. They didn't have as many sweet shots. They were contested looks and rushed shots. I thought what Colorado did to us, and what we have to get better on is second chance points. I think if we could have done a better job on that, the outcome of the game could have been different."
Spencer Dinwiddie, Freshman, Guard
On how the team played-"Overall, we did not play very well. At this point, we are very inconsistent. Until we fix that, we won't be a great team."
On the difference in the second half-"I would love to credit TXSO's defense, but it comes down to us not being able to come out and play the same way for 40 minutes. We come out and either start hard or we lack luster. We seem to play with this off and on switch; you can't play basketball like that."
On being prepared for TXSO's trap defense-"Coach did a great job scouting their defense. We knew pretty much everything they wanted to run and we had a way to guard it. We knew how they were going to defend us and we knew where we needed to have our outlets when they trapped. Sometimes we decided to execute, sometimes we didn't."
On if there was a personal battle with TXSO's Omar Strong-"No it wasn't a personal battle. To get into a personal battle you really have to be guarding each other; they were in a zone. I just tried to hit shots when my teammates found me and I was open. It doesn't do you any justice to pass up open shots against a zone, you got to make those and make the defense pay."
On missing Damien Cain-"Damien is definitely a talent, there's no doubt about it. You already know that he, for whatever reason, can't seem to stay on the court right now. We look forward to getting him back, because he is definitely a big piece of this team."
Carlon Brown, Senior, Guard
On the difference in the second half-"We played horrible in the second half, no excuses. I give TXSO credit for making some big shots. They got hot and got on a run. We didn't have the confidence, or whatever it may be, to stop their run and play our game."
On how this game settles with the team-"It's very disappointing because, I kind of hinted at this last game against Bakersfield, how I feel we should have played better and put them away so our guys who work on the scout team get a chance to have their families see them play. It was a disappointment, so I apologized to the guys. We better be ready for practice on Monday and be ready on Wednesday against New Orleans. We can't have this happen three games in a row against, what I and the rest of the team would think, are inferior opponents."
On Coach Boyle's message to play all 40 minutes-"Coach has been saying that probably the last four or five games, because the way we have been winning hasn't been indicative of how we can play and our potential. It's very disappointing to our coaching staff because they put in the time and effort in the scouting report, for us to come out and not execute is really frustrating."
On why they struggled against the zone in the second half- "I have no idea. We began playing the scoreboard. We took our opponent for granted. We live by the phrase, 'respect everybody, and fear no one. I didn't think we respected them, or feared them. They came back in the game and made it close. It was then that we started thinking about getting stops and executing. It's ridiculous. We are better than that and we are going to have to play better than that. No matter how bad people say our league is, if we do that against a Pac-12 team, we might end up losing by 20."
On missing Askia Booker and his energy-"Definitely, but it's one of those moments where somebody else has to step up. Guys who have never played, who got that opportunity to play, have to make a conscious effort to play well with those minutes they are given, especially when something like this happens. Coach brought it up after the game, saying that everybody needs to step up. He was kind of frustrated that we didn't have Askia to go to. So, everybody needs to work on their games and really turn it up from here on out, because, like they were saying earlier, we are already 11 games in now, and there is no turning back. We don't get any more Texas Southern games, or any more New Orleans games, we only have league (play)."
